


tears airport

by talesofthelotus



Series: XINGTOBER 2020 [7]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Zhang Yixing's Birthday 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofthelotus/pseuds/talesofthelotus
Summary: there is one common factor of every city.
Series: XINGTOBER 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959373
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	tears airport

Airports offer familiarity. Offer comfort, in the way that the process is always more-or-less the same, in the way they’re made up of the same components. A place to wait, the check-in for your luggage, the gate you must go to, the too-bright lights. The strangers doing the exact same thing.

Yixing has left part of his heart in them in these past few years. There are times that he could only name the date or the day depending on if what greeted him was the Beijing airport, the Shanghai one, the Incheon one, a totally new one. There are times that he can’t even name the airport he landed in, too, but he still found repose in them and the surety of their existence. Appointments change, places of filming change, his place of residence also changes; this doesn’t.

His phone tells him it’s 4:04AM. Two missed calls, too many unread messages across too many messaging apps. The bodyguard on his right sneezes for the tenth time in two minutes. Yixing wonders if he’ll catch a cold, too.

_I want to go home_ , he thinks.

But where is home? The dorms are emptier each time he visits, the members are slowly acquiring their own places now that they’re not as young. In his mother’s arms he feels a stranger, grown both too much and too little since the last time she saw him, and his grandparents offer too much of themselves to him. His city is as much home as it is not — it’s in his speech and in his bones, in the marrow of them, but no longer on his skin. No longer in his movements.

A practice room maybe, its floor slippery with sweat, smudges on the mirrors even when they’re wiped clean daily. He’s certainly spent more time in one than in his own bed. They hold memories and they put his soul at ease and he knows exactly what to do and how to act in them, and what more could he ask of something he calls home, really.

And still, if he closes his eyes, it’s airports that offer familiarity, offer comfort.


End file.
